Reel mowers are well known for cutting grass, often at close heights of cut. Many such reel mowers have a handle assembly that extends upwardly and rearwardly from the frame of the reel mower. This allows an operator who walks behind the reel mower during operation of the reel mower to grip and hold the handle assembly to guide and operate the reel mower. In many cases, the reel mower is self propelled by an internal combustion engine carried on the frame of the reel mower. This engine also provides power to the rotatable reel of the reel mower.
The internal combustion engine provided on many reel mowers is often a single cylinder engine. Such an engine characteristically produces vibration in the frame of the reel mower as the engine operates. This vibration interferes with the precision cutting afforded by the reel mower. Some way of reducing or compensating for the vibrations induced by the engine, or such other vibrational excitation source as might be present, would be advantageous.
In reel mowers having a plurality of ganged reel cutting units, such as reel mowers in the form of riding vehicles, the reel cutting units have been observed bouncing or bobbing vertically as the reel cutting units are propelled over the ground. Such bouncing or bobbing interferes with providing a consistent height of cut since grass will be cut higher when the reel cutting unit bounces up and lower when the reel cutting unit bounces down. This manifests itself in the cut grass swath in a washboard effect that appears as a plurality of alternating darker and lighter lateral strips in the swath. It would be an advance in the art to be able to eliminate or lessen this washboard effect by eliminating or reducing the magnitude of the bouncing or bobbing of the reel cutting units.